A wild mouse chase

Jim is in Seattle this week for some business meetings. He left the house this morning at some God-awful hour, and in a random act of true localism, our neighbor Dennis happened to be the taxi cab driver. Somehow, Dennis seemed to think that Jim was a sibling of our next-door neighbor, who is also named Jim, and couldn't seem to understand that he was not! The great part is that Jim got Dennis' business card, so if we need a taxi pickup at the airport sometime, we can call him. This will work especially well when my sister flies into Boston at 1am and needs a ride back to Quincy. Most cabbies have no idea how to get to or around Quincy, but Dennis will be perfect.

The drama of the day happened this evening when our cat Solomon brought a mouse into our house. One of the windows in our front porch was open and he was able to squeeze in there with the mouse in his mouth. The mouse was still very much alive. Solomon likes to play with the mouse before he kills it. Luckily, I was able to get there in time to close the front door so the mouse didn't get loose in our house. But there I was, with our neighbor Scott, trying to get the mouse out of the front porch. Annika was next door with Lisa and the boys, yelling "Mama! Mama! Mama!"  She is currently going through a stage where she's obsessed with Mommy.

The mouse finally ran out, but it took some gymnastics. There are a lot of places on our front porch where a small mouse can hide.  I felt like I was in a sit-com. As I walked back outside afterwards, I noticed that this was the second mouse that Solomon had caught today. The first was lying dead next to the hydrangea, with flies all over it. Yuck. We think Solomon is getting the mice from our next-door neighbor's back steps or garage. He is always hanging out there. You'd think that mice wouldn't want to come near our neighborhood, between Solomon and our neighbor George's 6 cats! Let's just say that, knock on wood, I've never had a problem with rabbits or squirrels in my garden!

Tonight I'm going to enjoy a bowl of Ben and Jerry's ice cream (my treat while Jim's away) and probably curl up with a book.